Thanksgiving... we are blessed

Thanksgiving was a small affair this year. We hoped to keep it a little bit more low key this year than in the past. And low key was certainly what it ended up being.
We didn't necessarily expect to have Thanksgiving by ourselves but it ended up quite nice.

I was quite proud of myself. I make the whole meal by my lonesome... all from scratch and with mostly new recipes. I cooked the turkey (the whole 16lb turkey... what was i thinking when i picked that monster up???!), it didn't look the best but, WOW!, did it taste good. No mashed potatoes but i did compromise and i made some hot crash potatoes. Corn, asparagus, glazed carrots. Homemade stuffing/dressing. I had meant to make some rolls but forgot to defrost them (yes... they were store bought. I'm not brave enough to make them myself yet) so almost ended up forfeiting on the rolls until Dick saved us and came to the rescue with dinner rolls in hand.

We were lucky enough to have him share Thanksgiving dinner with us. It was a nice small intimate dinner with the 6 of us. As it turned out, there ended up being quite a bit of family down. We ended up donating a extra turkey to the other house and they spent their nice little Thanksgiving over at the inlaws. It was all quite a confused little mess but thankfully (i hope) no feelings were hurt.



However, our little Thanksgiving made me think of all those little things I'm so very thankful for.

*I'm super thankful for our health. There have been many years past when we were sick enough that i didn't even want to do anything, and the addition of company/family made it almost unbearable. This year it was the opposite.

*I'm thankful for family. This year it was REALLY nice to have so much family around. I regret that we have to pick and choose between my family and DarRell's family for holidays. It would be nicer if we could be more centralized to where we could visit more often then we do.

* I feel lucky knowing that my children are adored (or maybe just tolerated at times?). The kids talk endlessly about how much they loved hanging out with them.

*It's great peace of mind knowing how lucky we are to having so much family. That we still have that time with our loved ones.

*I'm SO glad that my father-in-law is doing much better. I absolutely adore the man and seeing him come back to his healthy self is great peace of mind. Seeing my mother-in-law healthy again is another great blessing. Another holiday gathering with them both is a blessing we know we can't take advantage of.